Rising tuition trumps interest rate among students’ worries
Sometimes, it’s the “principal” of the thing. Particularly when “the thing” is a loan.
As lots of homeowners learned, borrowing too much money can lead to trouble even if interest rates are relatively low. If college students are wise, they’ll realize the current debate about the interest rate for their loans is a sideshow compared to rising prices.
President Barack Obama visited college students last week to argue for keeping the interest rate for federal student loans at 3.4 percent. He urged them to tell Congress, “Don’t double my rate” to 6.8 percent, as current law requires.
He was arguing against … no one. Republicans and Democrats alike propose holding the rate steady. As is often the case, they differ only over how to offset the cost (Republicans would cut spending; Democrats would raise someone’s taxes). Obama’s presumptive GOP opponent, Mitt Romney, also favors holding down the rate.
No doubt, a higher rate would be a blow to students. And the job market, still stagnant almost three years after the recession ended, means they’ll have a hard time finding a job to pay off their loans, whatever the interest rate. But the student-loan interest rate has fallen each of the past three years, and student debt rose sharply anyway. It now tops $1 trillion, more than Americans collectively owe in credit-card debt.
The root of the problem is the soaring amount of principal students are borrowing due to the rising price of tuition.
Tuition at Georgia’s public colleges has doubled during the past 10 years. Add the mandatory fees that figure more and more prominently into their prices, and the price has nearly tripled at both Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia.
In fact, given the past decade’s growth rate, students can expect a four-year degree to run them more than $47,000 at Tech and some $46,000 at UGA. And that’s just for tuition and fees: Living expenses for four years add thousands more.
Ten years ago, the cost of two semesters at either school was about $3,600, for an expected cost of $14,500 over four years (again, for tuition and fees only). It’s much the same story at Georgia’s other colleges. Is a degree really worth three times as much now as then?
Now, like most state agencies, colleges have been getting less from the Legislature: an average budget cut of 3 percent a year since 2008. So they’ve jacked up tuition and fees by 10-14 percent a year since then, depending on the school.
But that doesn’t explain why in the previous five years, when their take from the state budget was growing 5 percent annually, tuition and fees were still rising 6 to 8 percent a year. General inflation was about a third as fast. (The generosity of the HOPE scholarship almost certainly explains part of the faster growth for college prices.)
Had tuition and fees grown at even a 4 percent clip during the past decade, a loan to cover them at UGA for four years — even at that doubled federal interest rate — would wind up costing a student about $31,000, according to the feds’ online calculator.
At current rates of tuition growth and even assuming the lower interest rate, that same student is looking at $54,000. That’s an extra $200 a month in loan payments. For 10 years.
If this tale sounds similar to that of health care, you must have aced the SAT. Health care, education, energy: Markets in which the government plays a large role have seen prices grow wildly. And that’s a big reason many Americans feel they aren’t getting ahead, college degree or not.
– By Kyle Wingfield
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
199 comments Add your comment
DeborahinAthens
April 30th, 2012
6:39 am
Good column, good point. What do you suppose caused this rate of inflation in college costs? And how can it be controlled? I don’t understand how Hope makes prices go up. I would like to make one point. The Republicans are screeching that the Dems are manufacturing the “War on Women” and where did they take the money to pay for for keeping the loan rate at 3.4%? They are taking from the funds that would pay for mammograms and pap smears. Word is they wanted to weaken the Obama Healthcare bill buy slowly defunding it piece by piece. With all the tax breaks given to the oil industry (with Exxon being one of our most profitable companies) why did they have to take money from healthcare and why did they specifically target the part of healthcare that was for women? Then, to hear their hypocisy, about blaming Democrats for “making up” an election issue, telling us that all women worry about is the economy, is ludicrous and so typical of the Republican playbook. They make me want to vomit. So, my question to you Kyle, because this is a good column, why didn’t you tell us HOW the Republicans are paying for this bill?
I Report (-: You Whine )-: mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin...
April 30th, 2012
7:14 am
And so the president goes around the country pounding the table on issues that are totally misleading or grossly overstated. He goes around righting wrongs that exist only within the overwrought imagination of liberals whose minds are permanently stuck in the righteous and indignant mode of thought.
How else will obozo gin up his dimwit voters?
Run on his record? Hahahahhaha, yeah, ok.
DeborahinAthens
April 30th, 2012
7:15 am
Just read Paul Krugman’s column in NYT. He quotes Romney saying that a college education is a must, borrow money from Mom and Dad….what fracking planet does this idiot live on? At a time when this country is stumbling because our young people are not getting a decent education, Paul Ryan’s budget, which Romney loves to death, wants to cut Pell Grants. Why don’t you point this out, Kyle? The chance for ordinary, middle class kids to go to college is shrinking fast.
ByteMe
April 30th, 2012
7:42 am
As is often the case, they differ only over how to offset the cost (Republicans would cut spending; Democrats would raise someone’s taxes).
Let’s be clear: the Republicans want to cut spending on preventive health care, like mammograms. Democrats want to cut subsidies to big oil (somehow that’s “raising someone’s taxes”).
Obama’s presumptive GOP opponent, Mitt Romney, also favors holding down the rate.
Except that he was against it before he had no opinion on it before he was for it. Da wannabee is a flip-flopper.
ByteMe
April 30th, 2012
7:43 am
Health care, education, energy: Markets in which the government plays a large role have seen prices grow wildly
Same can be said for markets where demand outstrips supply or where the supply is nearly mandatory to survive in this world… like the very same markets you mention.
And if you want to blame government, why does the Republican-run state government keep raising tuition in Georgia?
Really?
April 30th, 2012
7:48 am
Read “The Fall of the Faculty” by Benjamin Ginsberg” and you will find the alarming statistics concerning the increase in administration relative to the faculty. There lies the rub.
Reformed Rightie
April 30th, 2012
7:54 am
Colleges have to change with the times. They currently have way more infrastructure then necessary. Online courses have made much of the cost of traditional college unnecessary. Campuses will probably always serve a purpose, but that purpose will be hugely diminished in the future. Of course no one wants to discuss this because a lot of people would feel they’re jobs will be threatened….and they will. ‘On campus’ colleges as we know them now are soon to become as useful as a typewriter.
Progressive Humanist
April 30th, 2012
7:54 am
I can’t wait for the usual parade of clowns to come in and write about how the rise in tuition is due to liberal professors whose salaries have tripled in the last 15 years and who make $300k a year for working 40 hours a month, none of which is true of course. But once it gets repeated enough on right wing blogs it must be true since opinions hold more weight than facts these days among that crowd.
david c
April 30th, 2012
7:55 am
“And so the president goes around the country pounding the table on issues that are totally misleading or grossly overstated. He goes around righting wrongs that exist only within the overwrought imagination of liberals whose minds are permanently stuck in the righteous and indignant mode of thought.
How else will obozo gin up his dimwit voters?
Run on his record? Hahahahhaha, yeah, ok.”
WTF?
Call It Like It Is
April 30th, 2012
7:55 am
And now back to the subject. Good blog Kyle. College has become a complete scam. You hit it right on the head with the increasing cost and the added filler. I have a niece going to KSU, and another going to UGA. They are forced to buy parking passes, forced to buy lunch plans, forced to pay student activitie fees and it goes on and on. When its all said and done your not getting what you paid for at the end. You put a student 50 to 60k in debt or more and they come out making 20k if there lucky. Then they learn everything on the job anyway. Its beyond sad to start off our youth like this, but the right nor the left do anything about it.
jconservative
April 30th, 2012
7:59 am
I attended college decades ago, graduating in the class of 1964.
I had a summer job. That summer job allowed me to save enough to pay for tuition, books, fees, room and board, all incidentials plus buy all my clothes, etc.
Those days have been gone for a long time.
DeborahinAthens has a solid point; “The chance for ordinary, middle class kids to go to college is shrinking fast.”
I would consider it a national defense priority that we educate our population. That means getting our fiscal house in order. That means stopping 31 years of increasing government spending and decreasing government revenue. And it means that we start paying off the debt we have allowed to accumulate in the last 31 years.
Selected government spending must be slowed. Government revenue must be allowed to grow. The election should be about which specific items are to be cut on both the spending and revenue sides.
But we will not do that, will we?
Ayn Rant
April 30th, 2012
8:08 am
First, to correct the assertion that the President was making an issue over a done deal. In fact, Congress declined to act on the “agreement” until the President publicized the issue in meetings with college students. Now, of course, Republicans give lip service to the notion but block progress by quibbling over the funding.
As usual, the politicians are haggling over problems, not solutions; a huge portion of student loans will never be paid back. The federal and state governments should convert the student loan program to an outright student subsidy program, and be done with it!
And yes, the cost of human development, in education, health care, and social services, keeps rising. And yes, government is involved because profit-making enterprises will not manage it. Human development needs, unlike human consumption needs, are not commodities that can be outsourced to Asia. We’re stuck with plain-old American stubbornness, inaction, and inefficiency.
Education is critically important to the near and long term future of the nation. It should be given equal priority, and equal funding, as defense. The states should pay outright the operating costs of “land-grant” universities, rather than imposing tuition charges.
As far as health care and social services go, solutions are known and commonly practiced in other developed countries, but we are too stubborn and politically befuddled to adopt them. Energy is another matter entirely: it is not a human development need and can be managed as a commodity.
carlosgvv
April 30th, 2012
8:08 am
There is another problem also. Liberal Arts degrees are becoming increasingly worthless while math and science degrees are becoming more and more valuable. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the advanced mathematical aptitude needed to earn these valuable degrees and must go the liberal arts route. Almost all of the in demand trade jobs also require mathematical skills. So, in addition to being saddled with huge students loans, large numbers of college and trade graduates have degrees and skills that are useless in today’s job market.
JKL2
April 30th, 2012
8:13 am
Doesn’t really matter what the interest rate is when they are not going to pay back their student loans anyway. There’s a reason why the government owns over $1T in student loans and it’s not because so many people are going to college.
If the Democrats care so much, why did they write/pass this bill raising the rates in the first place?
Linkster
April 30th, 2012
8:15 am
Tuition increased when securing student loans got easier when lenders realized they could sell all loans to a Fed govt that agreed to underwrite all student loans, regardless of how unwise they might be. Like the real estate bubble, we are seeing a tuition bubble due to easy money. The universities realized this and increased fees faster than inflation, taking advantage of an inexperienced, novice borrower (college students) that was unprepared and incapable of fully realizing the costs of loans long term. Just like in the real estate market, a correction is beginning and it won’t be pretty.
JKL2
April 30th, 2012
8:16 am
carlosgvv- Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the advanced mathematical aptitude needed to earn these valuable degrees and must go the liberal arts route.
Maybe you should try taking a math or science class. The “It’s not my fault Mom raised stupid kids” excuse doesn’t go very far.
DeborahinAthens
April 30th, 2012
8:18 am
@jconservative, you are so right. One reason I refused to vote for Dubya was his fiscal policies were irrational. You are correct that there is not one idiot in Washington that has the backbone to slice where it is needed. And “where it is needed” is the key phrase. Why are Republicans trampling on the areas that need assistance? Education and healthcare? Everyone agrees that our education system needs to be helped. It will start in pre-k. What was the very first whack Governor Deal made in his budget? Cut more than 20 days out of Headstart. Now, I’d you are a working family with a child in school and a child in Headstart, you have to find someone to take care of the child for 20 days. What does Ryan’s budget whack? Pell Grants. When they have to vote for keeping the student loan rate at 3.4 % what do the Republitards cut? Wmen’s healthcare. Then they go around telling everyone they are doing what their constituents want. Really? Then who are their constituents? People that can “go to Mom and Dadfor a loan”, women who ate fortunate enough to have private insurance. Since these cohorts are in a fast shrinking minority, I can only hpe that the People electing these idiots wake up. We need to eliminate the deficit, save SS and Medicare. Both are easy to do (raise normal SS retirement age to 70 if you were born after 1970, raise the annual SS payroll deduction limit to $1,000,000, stop paying precious Medicare dollars for 80 year olds that want a hip replacement–if they want ‘em pay for them out of pocket, repeal Medicare Part D. — the biggest boondoggle ever passed that was Bush’s pay back to big Pharma), but no Republitard or Democrat will EVER have the political will to do this. We are giving away the store to the old people ate the expense of our kids. By the way, I am 62.
DeborahinAthens
April 30th, 2012
8:20 am
I apologize for the typos. My IPad auto corrects where it deems necessary. Sorry.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
8:20 am
“I can’t wait for the usual parade of clowns to come in and write about how the rise in tuition is due to liberal professors whose salaries have tripled in the last 15 years and who make $300k a year for working 40 hours a month, none of which is true of course.”
Let me begin by citing the recent tax filings of one Elizabeth Warren, who is the current media darling running for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts.
Granny Warren lists $350k per year from Harvard working as a part-time professor.
Oh, she also received an interest-free loan from that august institution when she first hired on.
The one place wages aren’t stagnating and layoffs aren’t occurring at the same rate as in the real world is on our college campuses. Do as I say, not as I do is still the mantra of the liberal elite.
carlosgvv
April 30th, 2012
8:21 am
JKL2
Look up the word “aptitude” in the dictionary before making any more mindless comments here.
Thomas Heyward jr
April 30th, 2012
8:24 am
there are few jobs for graduates, that the actual quality of education our young people pay through the nose for has eroded, and that countless Americans are now slaves to massive debt simply for trying to get a college education — the notion that the status quo must hold is unconscionable.
Like housing and medicine, education costs went through the roof when government became involved. In the last three decades, the overall inflation rate has increased more than 100%, which means we basically pay double now for everything we buy. This price inflation is an inevitable consequence of printing money out of thin air and devaluing our dollar. But compare this inflation to the rise in the cost of college tuition, which has increased almost 500% in the same amount of time.
This is what happens when we print money out of thin air and couple it with government intervention in education.
When I went to school, we didn’t have a federal student loan program, and I was able to work my way through college and medical school because it wasn’t so expensive. What has changed? In the name of “helping” students through federal loans, the government has really hurt them in the long run by drastically driving up the overall cost of education and forcing poor and middle class Americans, who are just trying to better their lives, to take on unreasonable debt.
Centralized government planning is the main cause of so many of the challenges we face, and removing that obstacle is the primary way to ultimately fix education in the long term. The sooner we resolve these problems the better, of course, but it is never too soon and certainly never at the expense of Americans’ best short-term interests to take serious action now.
As we close in on a $15 trillion national debt, we must start such a government-to-free-market transition right away, and this is certainly something that can be accomplished without harming the average American in the process.
But constantly frightening Americans anytime someone dares to offer serious solutions is the easiest way to make sure there is never any transition, never any real reform, and never any recovery.
.
Ron Paul
curious
April 30th, 2012
8:26 am
Since colleges are centers for left wing indoctrination, I propose they be eliminated. Outsource everything to the Chinese and Indians. I do hate losing our semi-pro football and basketball, though.
The HOPE scholarship has encouraged colleges to continue raising their tuition. Families don’t care because somebody else is paying (HOPE). Sounds like our insurance plans.
Probably everyone agrees that spending cuts, along with revenue increases (hypothetical), should be on the table.
Why can’t our supposively intelligent Congress come to some compromise that let’s everybody at least have part of the loaf?
MarkV
April 30th, 2012
8:29 am
Kyle is careful to stay away from anything that might matter. To keep the student interest low the Republicans “would to cut spending” – Kyle does not mention of what they want to cut. The Democrats “would raise someone’s taxes.” No mention of whose taxes.
And what is the result of Kyle’s “brilliant analysis” of the reasons for high cost of tuition? It is all because the government has a role in college education. Really? Any evidence, other than just saying that? And what is your solution, Kyle? No government support? Make all colleges for profit? That will make us competitive with the many countries which understand the value of college education and make it affordable!
Buzz G
April 30th, 2012
8:37 am
Our Federal Government’s debt is nearly 16 trillion dollars. The debt will be a burden for generations. But that is just not enough for some people. They want the government to keep spending and spending and spending. Let someone else pay for it. Give me free this and free that. Give me low interest government loans for this and for that. Let someone else pay for it. I’m voting for Obama so he can give me free stuff. Free stuff for everyone. We all deserve it.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
8:39 am
And before the poutrage over “cutting women’s health care” gets to fainting couch levels, let’s take a REAL look at where funding is supposed to come from the GOP proposal, shall we?
http://edworkforce.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=292896
“Here are some examples of how the Obama administration has been using the (Obamacare prevention) fund to squander taxpayer resources:
A public clinic in Nashville, Tennessee used the money to offer free preventive services to dog and cats, not women and children.
$3 million went to lobby lawmakers in New York for legislation requiring chain restaurants to publicly post the amount of calories they serve.
$7 million was used to urge Alabama lawmakers to raise tobacco taxes on working families.
$16 million was allocated to help secure a ban on new fast food restaurants around Los Angeles.
Such waste has become so prevalent the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is investigating how these funds are being spent.
A Host of Other Government Programs Offer Preventive Services
At a hearing convened yesterday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was forced to admit services outside the Prevention and Public Health Fund remain available to individuals who seek preventive care, such as:
Cancer prevention and care, including breast and cervical cancer screenings;
Screenings for birth defects and developmental disabilities;
Tobacco prevention at the Center for Disease Control; and
Efforts that promote healthy nutrition and physical activity to prevent obesity.”
So spare us all the angst about how this will affect women’s or children’s health care in any way, shape or form, OK lib?
jd
April 30th, 2012
8:39 am
Kyle,
just 3 % a year, really? Prove it. And, look at per pupil expenditures. For example — the USG got a 5% bump which paid for half of the increase in students counted in 2009 (2010 and 2011 students are not receiving state assistance). Then, they took back 2 % in cuts, and … add em up —
JKL2
April 30th, 2012
8:46 am
Deborah- Everyone agrees that our education system needs to be helped. It will start in pre-k.
It actually starts at home long before pre-k. It begins with a stable family and parents who actually care about theie kids. (feel free to throw your race card here).
My daughter was writing when she was three. She was a nine-year-old fifth grader this year and still hasn’t learned anything in school yet. It’s amaizing what they can do when you work with them.
jd
April 30th, 2012
8:47 am
Last year, for the first time in memory, $0 were appropriated for the growth in the number of students… a cut of amist $182 million, or slighlty less than 10%.
Samantha
April 30th, 2012
8:48 am
The notion that the republicans are taking money from mammograms and pap smears is partisan nonsense. They are taking the money from a slush fund that Obama created to hide the catastrophic effect of his health care reform on medicare from the people till after the election.
JKL2
April 30th, 2012
8:50 am
carlosgvv- Look up the word “aptitude” in the dictionary before making any more mindless comments here.
Maybe you should look up the word “work”. Sorry your Mom raised stupid kids. Someone should help those poor people!
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
9:00 am
Oh, and to add to MarkV’s education regarding how the Dems are planning to fund this effort (sad that during a blog on education funding, the people who are complaining about not enough information are too lazy to educate themselves), here’s a summary of that:
“It’s expected that senate Democrats will soon introduce a plan to pay for the nearly $6 billion extension by closing, the ironically nicknamed, “John Edwards Loophole.” The loophole allows certain entities, called S-Corporations, to avoid paying their Medicare payroll tax—it earned its nickname from former Sen. John Edwards who used the loophole during his career as a trial lawyer. Edwards used the loophole to pay his salary from his S-Corporation, of which he was the only employee. The watchdog group Citizens for Tax Justice reported that Edwards funneled $26 million through his S-Corporation saving him $754,000 in Medicare taxes.”
Cosby
April 30th, 2012
9:01 am
The Univdrsity System..the latest great Ponzi Scheme…now comes the next economic melt down..student loans and behind them the government making it very easy to borrow money one cannot pay back…did the government not learn thie lesson with the housing debacle….A Ponzi Scheme promoted by The Federal Government and guess who pays…give ‘em hell Obama AKA Barry
Morning Reads – April 30, 2012 — Peach Pundit
April 30th, 2012
9:04 am
[...] higher education tuition, Kyle Wingfield reminds us that it’s the smoke, not the mirrors, that get you every [...]
carlosgvv
April 30th, 2012
9:09 am
JKL2
There’s something to be said about not going past the 8th grade, and you’re definitely the one to say it.
MarkV
April 30th, 2012
9:10 am
I do not need an arrogant bully like Tiberius to tell me what to do. This is about Kyle’s article, and how he presented the issue.
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
9:12 am
You just can’t make this crap up:
One of Mitt Romney’s top advisers claimed over the weekend that “the only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney’s advice.” Eric Fehrnstrom was referring to the revival of the American auto industry,…
This man has no shame. Does Romney now NOT like trees that are the right height?
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
9:14 am
Ignore Tiberius, extremely low self-esteem bordering on neurotic.
All I'm Saying Is....
April 30th, 2012
9:18 am
“Health care, education, energy: Markets in which the government plays a large role have seen prices grow wildly” — What an idiotic and completely unsubstantiated statement.
Are you telling me that natural gas prices have plunged because the U.S. government is involved? Are you saying that oil prices gyrate because of the U.S. government’s influence?
Are you telling me that education costs climb because the government helps to make loans available or because the HOPE scholarship was established? Education costs have outpaced inflation longer than the existence of HOPE. The reason why education costs climb greater than inflation is because (1) most of their costs are labor which is typically older with higher health costs and due (2) the fact that the higher education industry has been unable to reduce their labor costs through automation which is what other industries have done. You think parents are resistant to paying tuition for their kids now just wait when the ‘teacher’ and ‘classroom’ are both online and virtual.
And healthcare costs skyrocket because no one wants to tell someone that you don’t need additional tests as that spot on your lungs shown in the x-ray is nothing to worry about. Plus no one will force doctors and hospitals to publish their prices. (Well, I guess the government could but then we don’t want that do we, Kyle?)
Get some facts before you publish such nonsense as it completely undermines what little credibility you may still have.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
9:23 am
“I do not need an arrogant bully like Tiberius to tell me what to do.”
No, but you obviously need a non-partisan blogger to educate you on that which you refused to educate yourself, MarkV.
But then whining is so much easier for you libs than to actually do the work needed to (fill in the blank).
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
9:23 am
Markets in which the government plays a large role have seen prices grow wildly.
And what’s been the tuition growth rate at private colleges? Harvard, Yale, Berry (if you can call that a college), Presbyterian College, etc?
DannyX
April 30th, 2012
9:28 am
You know who raised taxes for education? Ronald Reagan.
During his first campaign for governor of California Reagan said he would not raise taxes. What was the first thing he did as governor? He raised taxes so California wouldn’t have to cut their expanding college/university system. He said he could blame the mess his predecessor, and that the voters would forget about the tax hike four years later when he would run for re-election. He was right he won re-election easily.
Now California is being rewarded with high tech firms starting up and relocating there.
Don't Tread
April 30th, 2012
9:32 am
“Families don’t care because somebody else is paying (HOPE). Sounds like our insurance plans.”
Somebody got it right.
When a third party payer gets involved (even if that third party “payer” is a loan), the price goes through the roof. Easy credit made home prices skyrocket. Ditto for cars. Eventually the bubble burst on the easy credit mortgages and the taxpayer is now left holding the bag. The taxpayer will be left holding the bag on all these student loans, too…just watch.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
9:34 am
Finn, as usual you miss the “cause” and “effect” portions of this discussion.
“Cause” – Government gets into the business of providing low-cost, ready money for people who wouldn’t normally be able to afford it, with lax or almost non-existent requirements to pay it back.
“Effect” – Colleges have no need to control costs or cut back (as every other entity has to in a down economy) because they still have a ready funding mechanism for their services. Then cry “It’s for the CHILDREN!” when anybody so much as tries to reduce the funding sources available.
JDW
April 30th, 2012
9:36 am
@Kyle..”Markets in which the government plays a large role have seen prices grow wildly. ”
Interesting strawman but do you have any reasonable data anywhere to back up that accusation.
A more reasonable person might note that the biggest factor driving education spending is in fact people. This immediately sets up a disconnect when comparing education, health care or any service where skilled people are the main cost input to general inflation. In education “Compensation accounts for between 60% and 70% of all spending.”*
The main reason general inflation has been so low is due to increases in productivity and import of goods from low cost producers. Industries such as education, which are skilled labor dependent simply don’t reap those benefits. In fact as the cost for skilled labor rises you end up with a cost curve that is disproportionate to the general inflation curve.
The other error in your approach is the combining of public (government involvement) and private( not so much) costs. The rise in private tuition, where government has a very small role far outstrips the rise in public tuition.
“While tuitions in the public sector rose at a higher percentage rate than those in the private
sector, the actual dollar increases for public colleges and universities were much lower. For
example, the sticker price for public research universities rose 56 percent between 1999 and
2009, amounting to an average increase of $2,486. During the same time period, tuition at
private research universities “only” rose 32 percent, but this equaled an average increase of
$7,380. A similar pattern holds for public and private master’s institutions.”*
In fact in 2009, for public universities, tuition increases did not even cover half the appropriations loss.
“Looking at public research institutions, for example, average tuition revenue increased by $369 per student between 2008 and 2009, but the loss in state and local appropriations per student was $751, slightly more than twice the amount generated in increased tuition revenues.”*
Data is from http://www.deltacostproject.org/resources/pdf/trendsissuehighlights.pdf
Of course digging into the problem for the true root causes is a lot more time consuming and difficult to explain than simply saying, yet again….
THE GOVERNMENT DID IT!
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
9:41 am
Geez, and some folks accuse Mitt Romney of harking back to the 50’s and 60’s.
DannyX reverts back to the 60’s and 70’s with his California success story which has no basis in fact today.
Bob Loblaw
April 30th, 2012
9:45 am
A’men, Kyle! These colleges act as if money has no value. Most students consolidate and privatize their loans anyway at a fixed (and right now very low) interest rate. This whole debate sucks.
No Artificial Flavors
April 30th, 2012
9:45 am
6-8% is what the interest rate was when I received my student loans in the early 2000s. Big deal. You end up paybabout $1,000 or so more dollars in the end, depending on tuition. If education is worth it then you will pay for it. If not, dont go to college in an already flooded market.
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
9:54 am
with lax or almost non-existent requirements to pay it back.
That was the case 15 years ago. Now, the IRS gets involved. Here’s what you can expect:
Tax Refund Offsets
The IRS can intercept any income tax refund you may be entitled to until your student loans are paid in full. This is one of the most popular methods of collecting on defaulted loans, and the Department of Education annually collects hundreds of millions of dollars this way. In some cases, you can challenge a tax refund offset.
Your Paycheck Garnished
The government can take (”garnish”) a limited portion of the wages of a student loan debtor who is in default. It can take up to 15% of your disposable income. However, it cannot take more than the equivalent of 30 times the current federal minimum wage.
Your Federal Benefits Taken
The government can take some federal benefit payments (including Social Security retirement benefits and Social Security disability benefits, but not Supplemental Security Income) as reimbursement for student loans.
You Get Sued
The government and private lenders can sue you to collect defaulted student loans. Unlike other debts, there is no time limit on suing to collect student loans — you can be sued indefinitely.
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
9:57 am
When GM needed a steady stream of diesel mechanics they invested in Guilford Technical Community College in NC. One year, that department didn’t exist, the next year, new buildings were in place and the department was educating kids.
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
10:03 am
You cons just don’t like the fact that Obama is playing politics with the loan rates. In a Congress where the status quo is “If Obama is for, we’re against it…and vice versa”, what do you expect?
He has to do whatever it takes to get stuff done that he wants done. What if Obama said he wanted it done and then just sat on his hands waiting for Congress to act? It wouldn’t of happened.
Jefferson
April 30th, 2012
10:03 am
Romney’s answer — shop around. If he borrows for his kids, its only to make money on the loan.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
10:07 am
“Here’s what you can expect:”
“Can expect” and “will expect” are two very different things, Finn. Obama claims he didn’t pay off his and Michelle’s student loans until just 8 years ago, much later than when they began raking in the big money. They obviously weren’t being pressured to pay them back, and it had nothing to do with his elected status, but everything to do with lax or non-existent enforcement.
Morning Reads – April 30, 2012
April 30th, 2012
10:09 am
[...] higher education tuition, Kyle Wingfield reminds us that it’s the smoke, not the mirrors, that get you every [...]
JKL2
April 30th, 2012
10:12 am
carlosgvv- There’s something to be said about not going past the 8th grade, and you’re definitely the one to say it.
You can always go back to school and get an education. It’s not too late. I had an aunt who started college at 46. Became a computer programmer at the college.
I had to take an upper level math class for my second degree. I hadn’t had a math class in 9 years at that time. Know what I did? Studied. Maybe you should try that instead of making excuses.
Kyle Wingfield
April 30th, 2012
10:20 am
JDW @ 9:36: Certainly, health care and education rely on highly skilled workers. But don’t you think there are also a lot of private industries where people are the main cost input? Particularly when the costs associated with health care are driving up the cost of labor? For example: When I was in college, the rule of thumb was that half a newspaper’s costs were people and half were everything else (paper, ink, etc.). Given the rise in health costs for employees and the decline of printed media vis-a-vis digital, I would expect that ratio to be more skewed toward people in my industry, at least. The same would be true for most service industries, which of course make up a larger and larger share of the economy.
As for reasonable data: I spent 600 words in this column describing just the local increases in higher education prices, and that didn’t even touch k-12; I didn’t think I needed to describe the rise in health costs, given the amount of discussion we’ve had on this blog about them during the past three years. Your distinction between public and private colleges doesn’t address the key point, because government loans apply to either one — and it’s the ability to borrow sky-high amounts without regard to one’s ability to repay the loans that most distorts this market. (It’s similar to third-party payments in health care, and government programs account for the largest portion of those.)
Interestingly, your point about the slower growth in private tuition undermines your point, because it would appear private institutions have been able to keep their costs from rising as quickly. The absolute dollar amounts are misleading, because looking only at tuition prices for public colleges requires us to ignore public appropriations that supplement tuition — private tuition was growing from a larger base because tuition isn’t the whole story at public colleges, so of course its absolute increase was larger even if its growth rate was slower.
As I noted in the column, public tuition in Georgia was rising quickly even when public subsidies were also rising in the early part of the last decade. The report you linked does not address that on a nationwide basis. So, it seems highly unlikely that declining appropriations tell the whole story, or even most of it.
ragnar danneskjold
April 30th, 2012
10:20 am
If you want a price to rise, increase “access” to it. Subsidies are the surest way to inflate profits for the receiver. I suspect those on the college payrolls want taxpayers to continue to keep them in the manner in which they are accustomed.
If you want to rein in unreasonable costs, eliminate subsidies. For colleges that would simply mean abolishing taxpayer subsidy of college loans, which by coincidence would also be beneficial for the student’s post schooling financial health.
Healthcare is a more complex problem – the health insurance industry has bred two generations of “someone else pays the bill throughout the lifetime” mentality. I cannot conceive of a cure that would not require (a) curtailing freedom of contract (i.e., mandatory a $500 minimum co-pay for any service, prohibit insurors paying more than $10,000 in bills in any month), and (b) serious constraint of malpractice actions. I cannot blithely endorse restrictions on economic freedom. The only steps I can support without reservation are elimination of tax deductions for medical expenses (which would add a minimal constraint on “demand”) and elimination of federally subsidized medical research (which would suddenly increase the supply of providers.) As to malpractice, I could live with adopting a scheme similar to workers’s comp as a compromise between legitimate need for recompense and punishment, and runaway juries.
grated
April 30th, 2012
10:28 am
Obama is the white Bill Clinton.
Cherokee
April 30th, 2012
10:30 am
On the issue of the interest rate: First, this rate increase they are talking about affects only subsidized Stafford loans and reverts the rate back to where everyone else with an unsubsidized Stafford loan (i.e. the ones working through school and independent of mom and dad) are. It’s an important nuance that I have not heard one pundit, the President or congressional leader mention.
On the issue of repayment: at 6.8%, the repayment per month for a standard repayment schedule over a 10 year period is about $110 per $10,000 financed (plus or minus). So, given a $60k loan, which should cover a modest lifestyle with roommates, tuition and fees at Tech, we are looking at $660 a month. A lot for sure, but not insurmountable. For a Tech grad in engineering, this should be no problem, given average starting salaries that will get you about $4000 a month after taxes. But I guess where the problem comes with the liberal arts and the relative worthlessness of those degrees. Starting jobs in those fields are $35-40k at most, but the pay climbs quickly once you are in. The income-dependent repayment would take a similar $60k loan down to $250-300 a month, which is very manageable. The debate is very emotional now and I think it’s important to have some perspective here.
There are so many bigger questions than just the amount of debt and the main one revolves around how and why we are educated in higher ed the way we are. Is nearly two years of BS “core” classes necessary for an engineering student? Why does the “college experience” revolve completely around the institution itself. Why do we insist on directly subsidizing majors like “General Studies.” Why are the basics for higher level work not taught at a university and the rest of the knowledge gained in the field through apprenticeship programs?
Maybe it all comes down to this: isn’t the relegation of higher ed to the new high school just the chickens from the decades of garbage education we are providing our kids coming home to roost? Why do companies demand a BA from a receptionist? Because K-12 education in this country stinks and a BA is the only way to guarantee that the employee knows how to subtract without a calculator. Even the “good schools” are terrible at preparing kids to be functional adults. The issue of the actual need for college is one that must be addressed over the next 15 years – we need a complete shake-up. In the end that is what is going to solve this issue.
Kyle Wingfield
April 30th, 2012
10:30 am
jd @ 8:39: In FY2008, the Legislature appropriated $2.142 billion for the university system. In FY2013, $1.829 billion. That’s an average decline of 3.11 percent per year during those five years. All data are taken from state budget reports.
You’re right that enrollment has increased during this time period. But it has grown at a slower rate (3.1 percent a year on average, from FY03 to FY12; figures are not yet available for FY13) than the university system’s total budget (5.4 percent a year on average from FY03 to FY12). These data are taken from USG reports.
ragnar danneskjold
April 30th, 2012
10:31 am
Reformed Rightie @ 7:54 and Carlosgvv @ 8:08 perhaps point to appropriate and do-able solutions. The lower costs of online colleges will have a beneficial effect on the industry. Carlosgvv correctly observes the shortage of math and science graduates and the surplus of psychology and history majors. The obvious solution for the latter is to limit the Federal loan program to the final two years of higher education, and only for math and science majors.
Progressive Humanist
April 30th, 2012
10:35 am
And within just a few minutes of my prediction that the clowns would roll in with their ignorance one did just that at 8:20. We may need a little instructional session for the less-than-well educated:
This poster uses anecdotal information about one professor to suggest that those numbers generalize to the greater population: “[Elizabeth] Warren lists $350k per year from Harvard working as a part-time professor.” This is high school level thinking. First, the pay of a Harvard professor is not representative of the pay of professors across the country. At most public colleges professors start out at $55k to 65k, even at top flight research universities. A tenured professor with administrative duties and many publications may make $100k. Business and law professors make a little more, but unless they’re administrators are unlikely to break $150k. You think that’s too much for someone with a PhD who is likely among the nation’s leading experts in their field? In most cases the only professors who make $300k are the ones at medical colleges, but hey, they’re professors AND medical doctors who do things like perform heart surgery and brain surgery and show others how to do it. Overpaid, right?
So based on the salary of one professor at Harvard, the poster comes to this conclusion: “The one place wages aren’t stagnating and layoffs aren’t occurring at the same rate as in the real world is on our college campuses.” More ignorance. Just like teachers in the public school system, college professors haven’t had raises in years and fewer are getting hired, so when attrition is factored in the workforce would be shrinking. The only thing that is keeping the raw numbers from shrinking is that many people have been going back to school because they are realizing that they don’t have the education to succeed in the current employment market. More college students means more demand for college professors. This is why there aren’t layoffs. But the professors certainly aren’t getting paid more and they aren’t making vast amounts of money.
The uneducated hick @ 8:20 blogging from his trailer might not have a whole lot of facts, or even the capacity for critical thought, but he does have a political agenda, and nothing can get in the way of that. It’s a pitty he couldn’t trade in that blind indoctrination for a more advanced education. Then he would actually be able to contribute something positive to the nation.
Jefferson
April 30th, 2012
10:41 am
Put a needs basis on the HOPE money and heads will explode. A loan without collateral, is just asking for trouble.
Intown
April 30th, 2012
10:43 am
Kyle: Your Georgia public college figures for costs show that those schools are an incredible bargain compared to the cost of a private 4-year college education. By the time my kids want to go to school, 4 years at a private college will cost half a million dollars. Factor in the increasing need for advanced degrees and the rising cost and you have an unsustainble situation. Do we have an education bubble?
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
10:45 am
Progressive Humanist needs to look up the term, “tip of the iceberg”.
It wouldn’t hurt if he/she also understood the meaning of “cause and effect”
Educating themselves on the effect of subsidies artificially inflating costs wouldn’t hurt their quest for knowledge, either.
Knowing the difference between being laid off and not getting a raise while still keeping your job would also be a good place for Progressive Humanist to start learning, either.
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
10:47 am
Obama claims he didn’t pay off his and Michelle’s student loans until just 8 years ago,
Tiberius, you don’t get out much, do you? Student loans come with a repayment schedule – to be paid back monthly over the course of umpteen years. The loan writers aren’t chasing people down trying to get them to pay them faster – they don’t want you to pay faster.
Let me tell you how a bank works, ok? A bank makes a loan to an individual and provides a repayment schedule at a certain rate. They want you to pay it back but they don’t want you to pay it back early! If you pay it back early then the bank doesn’t get the interest earnings on the months after you’ve paid off the loan early.
Does that make sense? A bank wants it’s borrowers to pay them back – that is it. No rush and don’t be delinquent.
Richard
April 30th, 2012
10:53 am
Thank you Kyle!
This is another example of the government trying to put a bandaid on a bullet wound. The problem is that people are actually buying this garbage.
To assign some real numbers, let’s say you ran up $50,000 in debt. At 6.8% over 10 years, you’re looking at $558.33/month (approximate). At 3.4%, it’s about $487.50/month. The government wants us to believe that the $70.83 difference is causing defaults rather than the $416.67 principal. It’s total BS.
The other thing is the 5% default rate which is another bogus number. If we’re looking at the number of people that can’t afford to make loan payments, it’s 90%. That’s the defaults plus the 85% that move back home to mom and dad so they don’t default.
Thank you Kyle for addressing the real issue here.
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
10:54 am
Yeah, let’s pay our collee level teachers and professors minimum wage. Let’s see what quality edumacashun we get then!
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
10:54 am
collee = college
Richard
April 30th, 2012
10:54 am
Here’s the scary question: At what point is a college degree no longer worth the cost?
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
10:55 am
Finn, responsible people on the government dime (as in student loans they received via the government) should be repaying those loans as fast as they financially can, so that funds can be made available to others who need them.
Holding onto those loans much longer than your ability to pay them off is doing a disservice to the rest of the people who are waiting in line for that money.
Not to mention it is lazy and irresponsible to not pay them off once you’ve “made it” when the money wasn’t yours to begin with.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
10:58 am
“Yeah, let’s pay our collee level teachers and professors minimum wage. ”
Well, considering that absolutely NO ONE has actually called for that to happen, this is known as manufacturing an issue – something liberals like Finn McCool specialize in.
See: GOP war on women, “access” to contraceptives, and college loan interest rates as proof.
JDW
April 30th, 2012
11:00 am
@Kyle…”Given the rise in health costs for employees and the decline of printed media vis-a-vis digital, I would expect that ratio to be more skewed toward people in my industry, at least. ”
Media is a perfect example to use to draw a contrast. Media has been disintermediated by the internet while the same is not true, as yet, for education. While the raw percentages of the cost of people in media have increased the supply has exploded driving down the cost. You now compete with an untold number of low cost providers i.e. anyone with a computer and internet connection. The same is not true in education thus higher costs have been the result.
Now to this point…”government loans apply to either one — and it’s the ability to borrow sky-high amounts without regard to one’s ability to repay the loans that most distorts this market.”
First off there is not “disregard of one’s ability to repay”. The very nature of an education is that it creates the ability to repay and there are significant collection measures in place to enforce this repayment. Second, you can’t seriously be postulating that via government spending we are overeducating our population…
“The evidence for the individual economic benefits of college is overwhelming. While the wage premium for a college education is not at its highest level ever, it is larger than it was five years ago, and typical four-year-college graduates earn more than 50 percent above typical high-school graduates.”
http://chronicle.com/article/Are-Too-Many-Students-Going/49039/
With returns like that it would be impossible to “overspend” in the near term.
Lastly…”Interestingly, your point about the slower growth in private tuition undermines your point, because it would appear private institutions have been able to keep their costs from rising as quickly.”
Nope…the raw cost is per student and includes all funding sources. Fact is private institutions spend more than twice as much per student and that gap is not closing. The irrelevant data is the percentage increase in tuition. The important part is how many dollars an institution spends to produce an end product of comparable quality. Public universities simply get more value for the dollar than private ones.
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
11:00 am
LOL, Tiberius thinks one student won’t get a college loan because somebody else hasn’t paid off their loan already. The money isn’t available yet?
mwuahahahahahaha
The interest on the loans go to offset the cost of providing them. Well, I know your eyes are glazin’ over so I won’t go on.
Just ludicrous.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
11:02 am
But rising tuition is so much less fun to talk about than the War On Women.
Just another distraction from the last four years and:
- higher unemployment
- higher deficits
- more families on welfare
- higher gas prices
Obozo: Fail.
curious
April 30th, 2012
11:04 am
If charging a higher interest rate on a student loan is okay, why not increase taxes on the rich?
According to the arguments here, the increased cost for a loan will be minimal, so why bother?
The increased tax on the rich will only provide a minimal impact on the deficit, so why bother?
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
11:04 am
You Cons are cutting off the face to spite the nose.
Starve the institutions, drop teacher wages, take away alot of the government funding for education. And you expect America will thrive?
When Bolivia passes us by on the schedule of educated nations what will your plan be then? Hope you folks like manual labor. You are arguing for more of it.
Rafe Hollister
April 30th, 2012
11:05 am
Kyle, one of the big cost drivers you missed is the devaluation of the dollar. Why is oil so high? The same reason education costs tend to rise. Bernanke running that printing press in an effort to bring down the deficit and debt by inflating the dollar causes prices to rise. The libs just whine on and on about tax “fairness”, while they miss how this administration is causing their paychecks and savings to evaporate before their eyes. Oblamer keeps the focus on “Fairness”, big oil, and Wall Street, to shift their attention.
The Hope scholarship also served as “free money” for the schools. For awhile they could spend at will and the legislature would just up the amount paid for tuition. We got condos in Atlanta, “research centers” in Costa Rico, etc, because they were flush with money. They have not been forced to austerity yet, and as long as students are competing to get in, they will not be.
How long before students realize that only 50% of them are finding jobs upon exit from college? Obama hopes that he can keep them distracted from their situation until after Nov.
That Black guy
April 30th, 2012
11:09 am
DeborahinAthens
April 30th, 2012
6:39 am
why did they have to take money from healthcare and why did they specifically target the part of healthcare that was for women?
________________________________________________________________________
You DO realize that is the EXACT same cut that Obama proposed in his 2013 budget, right.
Of course you knew that.
Road Scholar
April 30th, 2012
11:09 am
Reformed Rightie: “Colleges have to change with the times. They currently have way more infrastructure then necessary. Online courses have made much of the cost of traditional college unnecessary.”
So how do students get to share ideas and solutions if courses are offered on-line? And what is to keep “students on line” from cheating? Did you see the news last night about groups of kids of different age brackets taking an “unsupervised ” test? Rampant cheating was filmed by hidden cameras; some of the kids said that they would “never cheat”! A college professor my wife works with was giving final exams recently when she found a student with an I phone between his legs looking at his notes while trying to take his closed book test. He violently denied he had done anything wong! My wife requires students to work on projects in groups to not only master/understand the study, but to improve inter-personal skills….needed to work in business!
As for facilities, GT CE program has increased the enrollments by a factor of at least 2.5 times. It is the 3rd ranked CE program in the US by US News and World Report. Students can’t fit into the classrooms, sit on the floor or stand during class. Conducive to learning? Labs over crowded…
Deborah: Even with your misspellings, your report was a very factual and pertinent response.
Oh, and Kyle, good column!
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
11:09 am
Government, like a bank, issues a loan with an expected reimbursement rate. You know what that rate and term give to both the government and to banks? An expected stream of income! DOOH! It can expect to receive so many millions of dollars each month from it’s outstanding loans. This revenue stream goes to supporting long term investments.
Why do i even bother?
Jefferson
April 30th, 2012
11:10 am
At this rate Nancy will be busy next year.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
11:12 am
“The very nature of an education is that it creates the ability to repay and there are significant collection measures in place to enforce this repayment.”
Yeah, ’cause that degree in French Literature is sure going to pay the bills in ANY market.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
11:15 am
“LOL, Tiberius thinks one student won’t get a college loan because somebody else hasn’t paid off their loan already. The money isn’t available yet?”
Apparently, Finn never learned the basics of banking, where you must first have capital in order to loan it out.
But then, he’s so wrapped up in government, which in his mind never has to worry about whether actual money is available, that solid fiscal rules need not apply in the real world.
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
11:21 am
Tiberius – hopefully you’re not working as a financial planner.
When you have loans at different rates, it’s best to focus on the higher rate loans first because those are costing you more money. I’m 47 years old and just finished paying off my student loans 4 years ago – the loans with 6% interest. The student loans I had at 12% were paid off within two years of leaving college.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
11:27 am
Thanks for mooching off the taxpayers for about 20 years, Finn.
The difference between you and me will always be one of personal responsibility, Finn.
I have it in spades, and you don’t believe in that concept very much.
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
11:28 am
Finn never learned the basics of banking, where you must first have capital in order to loan it out
This is like you cons comparing private debt (personal credit cards, Home Equity loans, etc) to federal government debt. Totally clueless.
The money isn’t going to “run out”, Tiberius. and one of the reasons it isn’t going to run out is because it’s being repaid with interest.
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
11:29 am
I have it in spades, and you don’t believe in that concept very much.
You announce your low self-esteem like 30 times a day, Tiberius.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
11:31 am
“The money isn’t going to “run out”, Tiberius. and one of the reasons it isn’t going to run out is because it’s being repaid with interest.”
More manufacturing of an issue, Finn, since no one has ever said it was going to run out. However, availability is an issue when too much debt is outstanding and people aren’t paying back their loans. That’s how banking works in the real world, Finn.
Not your manufactured one.
MrLiberty
April 30th, 2012
11:32 am
What a shame that you waited until nearly your last sentence to point out the HEART of the matter. Every market in which government money plays a role sees unnaturally rising prices. This is the heart of the Austrian economic explanation for all bubbles and bursting bubbles, and has been the primary driving force behind ONLY ONE presidential candidate – Ron Paul of course.
Only he understands the connection between low interest rates and malinvestment. Only he pointed out the building bubble in the early 2000s. Only HE bothered to warn everyone about the impending housing crisis.
But of course Romney and Obama are huge recipients of Goldman Sachs money so they love the low interest rate lie that fosters chronic dependency on fiat money and and failed economy.
The race is far from over. Plenty of delegates remain unselected. The convention has not happened. In the early 1900s a republican convention was held in which a candidate was not selected until the 10th ballot. His name was Warren Harding. For all his other flaws, he allowed the economic collapse of 1920 to simply resolve itself without Federal Reserve or government intervention. The pain was great. In real numbers, the situation was even worse than at the beginning of the Great Depression. It was right at the end of WWI, dependency on government spending combined with cheap money and Federal Reserve expansion of credit for the war led to the collapse. He let the market resolve the malinvestment and the crisis ended in just over a year. His idiot sec. of state Hoover demanded massive intervention in the economy. Thankfully Harding was a man of principle. It would take Hoover’s massive intervention after the crash in 29 to show the folly of that approach. Hoover began the New Deal policies of FDR that caused so much pain for so long.
Dr. Ron Paul may come out of Tampa as the nominee, and given the massive collapse the US economy is in for, that will be the best thing we could hope for as certainly both Obama and Romney would do everything to make things worse for the rest of us while making sure their friends on Wall Street are protected from any serious misery.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
11:35 am
“Dr. Ron Paul may come out of Tampa as the nominee,”
Yeah, and the Zapruder film proves that JFK shot first . . .
Two sentences that have no basis in reality.
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
11:35 am
Tiberius must have gone to a bank for a loan and the banker said “Um, no, not today, we don’t have any more money…come back next month and try us then.”
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
11:37 am
However, availability is an issue when too much debt is outstanding and people aren’t paying back their loans.
So, there is a repayment problem so bad it’s affecting the government’s ability to provide loans? I guess the default rate nationally must be over 50%, there, Tiberius?
Rafe Hollister
April 30th, 2012
11:37 am
Dr. Ron Paul may come out of Tampa as the nominee,
Yeah, and he and Louis Farrakhan will join hands and board the mother wheel and ascend into space.
Rafe Hollister
April 30th, 2012
11:39 am
Finn, you are actually right about one thing, as long as Bernanke is in charge of the money supply, there is no chance of ever running out of money. Printing wheel keep on turning…
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
11:43 am
Finn, get this through that thick skull of yours. EVERY slow repayment and EVERY default affects the ability to get new capital into a financial system, unless that system is fiscally unsound as this government is.
But hey, if you think that $1 TRILLION in outstanding loans, many of which will likely never get paid back or at the very least be delayed for decades is a good situation to be in, that’s your problem, not mine.
Kyle Wingfield
April 30th, 2012
11:45 am
JDW @ 11:00: I’m sorry, but it simply isn’t true that the 56% vs. 32% figure includes all funding sources. It is a specific reference to tuition increases. Tuition, of course, does not cover all funding sources.
On your other points:
1. You note “the same is not true, as yet, for education.” The question is: Why? When I was in high school more than 15 years ago, we could take distance-learning classes in Japanese, Russian and other subjects not offered by my high school. Given the rapid advances in technology since then, why has education (especially higher ed) not taken advantage of them to reach more students with fewer teachers — and probably increased quality along the way, by having more students taught by the best teachers? My belief is that education simply hasn’t faced the same competitive pressures, because it essentially can increase its prices at will: either by raising property taxes at the k-12 level, or by increasing tuition and telling 18-year-olds they’ll be failures in life unless they pay up (and then supplying loans underwritten by the federal government to make sure they can pay, at least up front).
2. Of course there’s a disregard of one’s ability to repay. Do the lenders charge lower interest rates for students pursuing finance degrees vs. those studying art history? Is there a differentiation based on GPA, SAT scores, etc.? Based on the number of people studying a given subject relative to the number of jobs expected to be available for graduates in it? Of course higher education makes one more likely to be able to repay the loan than if they had taken out the same loan and not gotten more education — but that’s not the issue. The issue is whether you can get the same loan, at the same terms, to study, say, journalism as to study engineering. And the ability to repay will be very different among various courses of study and, let’s face it, aptitude of students.
Kyle Wingfield
April 30th, 2012
11:47 am
Rafe @ 11:05: Good points.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
11:53 am
Great points @ 11:45, Kyle.
Cobbian
April 30th, 2012
11:54 am
The question of why costs are going up so much in colleges and universities is a good one. One of the things that has driven costs is demand itself – it has been drummed into all our heads that a college education is a must if you are going to make a reasonable living. And, turns out it is either true or we made it true. But other than that, I don’t think we know what is driving college costs.
Romney’s advise to students is to borrow money from their parents. Really love that one.
As for health care, we have had health care costs out-pacing inflation for decades. It is not government involvement that drives health care costs. What is tricky about trying to parse the problem is that health care demand is “relatively inelastic.” When you need health care, you really need health care. The most costly forms of treatment are for terrible accidents and diseases which treating would literally bankrupt most anyone, except the 1%. But, since life itself is at stake, most families would pay down to their last dime. Health care dynamics don’t fit capitalism very well. Health insurance has come between what should be a natural relationship between the service provider and the consumer. Instead both are now customers of the insurance companies.
We won’t solve it with “tort reform” either, mostly because it hasn’t worked to reduce health care costs in states where it has already been enacted. The bigger danger, though, is that it is a direct assault on the Bill of Rights. The 7th Amendment to the Constitution provides for a trial by jury “where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars…” What we do with tort reform is substitute the wisdom of politicians for a judgement of our peers. No system is perfect, but I would rather live with the imperfect jury system than the wisdom of politicians.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
11:59 am
Cobbian, you’ve just posted 4 paragraphs of opinionated statements, yet provide no proof for those opinions.
Facts work so much better when trying to sway someone to your beliefs.
Hillbilly D
April 30th, 2012
12:02 pm
Is a degree really worth three times as much now as then?
It isn’t but the colleges and universities, which are a big business, have done an excellent job in selling the notion that every person needs and must have a college degree. They’ve created a market and it’s a seller’s market. The can charge just about whatever they want due to the laws of supply and demand.
In my part of the world, the only construction going on, is rapid expansion of college and university campuses. New buildings are sprouting up faster than people’s gardens. In a time of belt tightening for most everybody else, they’re still spending money like sailors on shore leave.
There are also other external factors at work, but those aren’t unique to the education system.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
12:03 pm
Ever notice how anything the government gets involved in gets all hosed up and more expensive?
Just a long series of coincidences, I’m sure.
Jefferson
April 30th, 2012
12:03 pm
If you are financing food and board under the guise of going to college, this is not a good idea. Some folks who were lucky enough to not have to be in debt and go to college will have a hard time understanding those who are not so lucky. It is indeed a struggle.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
12:06 pm
“but the colleges and universities, which are a big business, have done an excellent job in selling the notion that every person needs and must have a college degree.”
One of my favorite movie lines, Hillbilly D:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiRGRvE_Wqg
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
12:06 pm
Tiberius, paying your monthly bill in full each month is “slow” payment?
Do you pay your cable bill one month ahead? Do you prepay on your monthly gas bill?
You equate someone who pays their bills ON TIME and IN FULL as a deadbeat? With poor ethics and morals?
You should really listen to the drivel that comes off your fingertips day in and day out.
Trolls Bane
April 30th, 2012
12:13 pm
Riddle me this … why has the GA legislature decreased funding for higher education in this state? How can this decrease not result in higher costs for students?
I guess the priority is a good education for the scions of the already successful and best of luck to every one else .. unless you get a full scholarship to Harvard
Trolls Bane
April 30th, 2012
12:16 pm
Hillbilly, since you claim a college degree is not required, how then can you even get your foot in the door in corporate America without one? Last time I checked most good / well paying jobs REQUIRE a college degree, some even REQUIRE a masters or doctorate ( MD – Doctor of Medicine, JD – Doctor of Laws), etc. …
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
12:17 pm
why has the GA legislature decreased funding for higher education in this state?
———
Maybe they needed to balance the budget.
A foreign concept to you Obozo receptacles.
JDW
April 30th, 2012
12:21 pm
@Kyle…”My belief is that education simply hasn’t faced the same competitive pressures, because it essentially can increase its prices at will: either by raising property taxes at the k-12 level, or by increasing tuition and telling 18-year-olds they’ll be failures in life unless they pay up”
People once believed the world was flat…they didn’t have any evidence either. On the other hand to say that property taxes can be raised at will to create an unlimited pool of education money is simply utter nonsense….if that were true we would have no funding issues. As for the bit about “fear mongering” 18 year olds…are you trying to say that a college education has no impact on one’s earning ability. In spite of mountains of data to the contrary?
“Kyle wrote…Of course higher education makes one more likely to be able to repay the loan than if they had taken out the same loan and not gotten more education — but that’s not the issue.”
That is EXACTLY the issue. If you can across a population increase earning by 150% and up you should do it across as wide a population as possible. If you want to “limit” non performing investments then do it by institution class…the class that leads the default parade by a huge margin….
FOR PROFIT EDUCATIORS…they make up 50% of the defaults and “educate” 10% of the population. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/education/13loans.html
Sounds to me that is the problem….poor regulation of private educational enterprise.
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
12:24 pm
as long as Bernanke is in charge of the money supply, there is no chance of ever running out of money.
Put a Republican in there and the fed’s strategy will change dramatically? Yeah, right.
Dusty
April 30th, 2012
12:24 pm
Kyle write a good column reminding all that “borrowing too much money can lead to trouble”. He’s talking about student loans and government involvement.
In the first place, you don’t have to have government loans. Where are the parents? Are they not considered responsible for their children up to 24 years on some government entites?
I speak from experience. Our five children have seven college degrees(including a recent PhD in science) and not one of them ever got a government loan. They took advantage of local universities,scholarships, lived at home sometimes, worked part time, bought used books, and were always economical. We, the parents did help them financially when there was a need and we are happy middle class.. But the children paid for much of it themselves because they wish to pay for it independently. Independence! But they knew that we, the parents, were always there for them
Our family stressed education and expected each child to go as far as possible. They did. We helped. So did the government with state universities and federal participation also. But we must look to ourselves to cut costs and demand the same from education, healthcare, and all aspects of our government. Let us start with ourselves as family conservatives remembering, “borrowing is bad!”.
We can manage!! We thrive on independence.
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
12:26 pm
FOR PROFIT EDUCATIORS…they make up 50% of the defaults and “educate” 10% of the population.
You can’t get a job with those degrees….there is a reason for that.
Hillbilly D
April 30th, 2012
12:27 pm
Trolls Bane
The majority of people in the U.S. don’t work in “corporate America”. Most tradesmen make pretty good money. And if everyone in America has a Doctorate, as you suggest, then a Doctorate loses its value. Somebody still has to pick up the garbage, plant the crops, fix what’s broken, etc.
And by the way, I spent many years in the car business and I couldn’t even count how many car salesmen I knew that had 6 figure incomes and a lot of them had a high school diploma and that was it. They had a skill, which could be refined, but basically can’t be taught. They were born with the ability to sell.
Darwin
April 30th, 2012
12:28 pm
The government plays a large role in energy? Please explain.
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
12:31 pm
Our five children have seven college degrees(including a recent PhD in science) and not one of them ever got a government loan.
So, now taking out a loan to better yourself is a bad thing? If you pay it back on time and in full you are a bad person?
The government lends money to consumers at 3.8% and you all squeal. The government lends out billions to banks at ZERO interest and you have no beef with that?
Banks are profiting off interest-free taxpayer dollars. And you got nothing. Government loans AT A COST to individuals to better themselves and “OMG the sinners!”
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
12:32 pm
“Tiberius, paying your monthly bill in full each month is “slow” payment??
No, however, not paying off your student loans as quickly as you are able to (as in the Obama’s instance), since they were given to you at the expense of others, i.e. the taxpayers, is ungrateful.
“Do you pay your cable bill one month ahead?”
No, nor do they loan me their services in advance. Your question is not based on comparable situations.
“Do you prepay on your monthly gas bill?”
See last comment.
“You equate someone who pays their bills ON TIME and IN FULL as a deadbeat?”
No, I see someone who drags out their student loan repayment when they can afford to repay it much sooner as being a deadbeat.
“With poor ethics and morals?”
Yes.
Darwin
April 30th, 2012
12:35 pm
“Health care, education, energy: Markets in which the government plays a large role have seen prices grow wildly.” So, countries that have a single payer health care system – how do they fare in costs vs the U.S?
MrLiberty
April 30th, 2012
12:38 pm
One half of every transaction is MONEY. The government, through the Federal Reserve controls the supply of money. Since the creation of the Fed and more specifically the end of the so-called gold standard in 1971, there has been no limit to how much is being created/printed, etc. More money chasing after a limited supply of goods always results in rising prices. Everyone keeps saying that prices have been rising without government involvement here, there, or somewhere else. Government has had its hand in every transaction via the fiat dollar. It is just that in the areas of heathcare (50% of every dollar spent comes through government hands first), education (grossly low interest rate loans), housing (same as education) combined with all of the regulations, restriction, incentives, subsidies, etc. that govenrment added to the mix as well, the problems exhibit themselves in even great ways than in less restricted, less manipulated sectors of the market.
It is about the dollar. That green piece of paper has lost nearly 98% of its value since the creation of the Fed in 1913. You cannot solve inflationary problems without first getting rid of the Federal Reserve and returning to a market-chosen sound monetary standard (as opposed to just another government imposed/manipulated gold standard as some are suggesting).
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
12:41 pm
“So, countries that have a single payer health care system – how do they fare in costs vs the U.S?”
Better than us. But then, they do not have our standard of living, our legal system which inflates costs by about 30% and they don’t run as many expensive tests as we do.
Because the reasons WHY our costs are so high are more important than the act that our costs are so high, Darwin.
MrLiberty
April 30th, 2012
12:42 pm
Darwin – through rationing, price fixing, longer and longer waits for service, and by hiding the costs of their medical system in other taxes, fees, etc. There is no free lunch and government never does anything well. All single-payer systems are on the verge of collapse. The massive debt that every country carries is where it is all hidden. Nobody is paying for their medical systems each year. They are all just passing it on to the next generations through debt. We are doing that too along with trillions for pointless wars.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
12:48 pm
Put a Republican in there and the fed’s strategy will change dramatically?
———-
Correct. A Republican would likely push to end the foolish “dual mandate” and return the Fed to its proper role–price stability.
We’ll wait while you go off and Google all that.
Dusty
April 30th, 2012
12:48 pm
No Finn,
Don’t jump on my comments just because I am conservative.
Acquiring a loan is not necessarily a bad thing. But living without a loan and its interest is much safer economically.
ARE you saying everyone should have a loan to be a good citizen? If you want to write exaggerations, I can do it too. You make a habit of it.
Proove it with FACTS
April 30th, 2012
12:48 pm
“But then, they do not have our standard of living, our legal system which inflates costs by about 30% and they don’t run as many expensive tests as we do.”
Please provide an unbiased link to back up these assertions
Breakdown of nations such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark etc not having US std of living would be a great start then you could move into the 30% figure for associated legal costs.
I’m sure this will be easy to back up with unbiased links that we all could agree are accurate sources of information
Thanks in advance for your time and assistance in providing us this information
Kyle Wingfield
April 30th, 2012
12:50 pm
JDW @ 12:21: Of course “to say that property taxes can be raised at will to create an unlimited pool of education money” is nonsense. That’s why I didn’t say that. But the only check on a school board’s ability to raise property taxes is the electorate’s willingness to vote them out, and the electorate has proven itself generally apathetic toward these local-level elections. A school board certainly faces far less pressure to keep its costs, and in turn its prices, low than any business in a competitive industry faces.
And no, I never said “a college education has no impact on one’s earning ability.” (For someone who likes to accuse me of fighting straw men, you have a nasty habit of arguing against things I never wrote.) But college — not post-secondary education, but specifically “college” — is not for everyone. But that’s not what we tell teenagers. I’ve never seen a high school grad lauded in the same way for attending technical school, even though that might be the best way for that particular person to maximize his earning potential.
What I would like to know about the default rates for the for-profit colleges versus others is how the default rates compare for students of similar academic credentials entering college. The NYT story doesn’t address that, although it hints that the for-profit colleges serve less qualified students when it notes they “typically serve low-income students”: There is a general, although not inescapable, link between a student’s family income (I assume that’s what the reference means) and his/her academic credentials.
Are these students defaulting more often simply because they were more marginal students than the general college population — and thus are less able to a) finish the course work and b) capitalize on it by landing a lucrative job? (The DOE data don’t tell us either way.) If so, did the feds contribute to the problem by underwriting their loans, again without regard to their specific ability to repay them, because the policy was to increase the number of college graduates by any means necessary (perhaps out of the belief that all college graduates are necessarily better off)?
Can you say “subprime mortgage”?
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
12:53 pm
You libtards are arguing about pennies when you should be concerned about pounds.
Your Messiah has you well trained. He tugs on your leash a bit and you start yapping.
Democrats: So easily led.
Dusty
April 30th, 2012
12:56 pm
Hillbilly D 12:27
I appreciate your support of the people who keep us “going” in so many ways and do not have college degrees.
For instance, your neighbor with 80 thousand chickens may not have a college degree but I surely am glad he’s busy raising those chickens. A day without fried chicken is like a day without…….ooh you know. Just pass me one of those wings!!
Proove it with FACTS
April 30th, 2012
12:56 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index
If I’m not mistaken the top 3 do have health care for all
Granted they are not the exact countries I mentioned, so want to apologize for not having those listed correctly
If you could assist with the 30% legal cost figure that would be great and also help shut down this lib haters
thanks again
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
1:01 pm
Student loans should be limited to borrowers with worthwhile majors who will likely be able to repay their loans, specifically STEM majors and perhaps medical degrees.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
1:02 pm
“then you could move into the 30% figure for associated legal costs.”
Here’s the first backup link:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/27/news/la-heb-doctors-aggressive-medicine-20110927
Proove it with FACTS
April 30th, 2012
1:02 pm
Does anyone have the cost figures and saving related to health care tort reform efforts for Texas?
Hopefully it was at least the 30% that was mentioned earlier………
Hopefully more and what a saving for the citizens of Texas
They are saving on health care, I hope
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
1:04 pm
Proove it–how much did you donate to charities that provide free health care last year?
Proove it with FACTS
April 30th, 2012
1:06 pm
Didn’t see the 30% figure in the article……… Hoping you have some info on that so I can utilize it myself in the future
I didn’t realize it was that much
That is a ton of money
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
1:07 pm
And another:
http://www.medicaldaily.com/news/20111228/8456/lawsuit-malpractice-physician-defensive-medicine-patients-for-fair-compensation-florida-health.htm
Proove it with FACTS
April 30th, 2012
1:08 pm
My donations go to a local food bank and time goes to Habitat
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
1:08 pm
And another:
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/170/12/1081
Proove it with FACTS
April 30th, 2012
1:11 pm
Tiberius
The articles you are providing seem to match your overall point which is great. Thanks for the information and info, however do you have anything with the 30% figure or something in that range?
Those articles are great, but the do not say 10%, 30% or 50%.
I know it is high and was looking for a definitive number
Thanks again for taking the time to provide the links
catch up with you later
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
1:17 pm
So when it comes to achieving your dream of health care for all, you were thinking of using other people’s money?
Hypocrite.
Proove it with FACTS
April 30th, 2012
1:23 pm
Barry
Were you directing your last post to me? Not sure what you are referencing. I asked Tiberius to provide some information and he politely did so.
Since you were asking, what charities do you support?
JDW
April 30th, 2012
1:28 pm
@Kyle…”Can you say “subprime mortgage”?”
An apt comparison and another case where LACK OF government oversight and action is the primary culprit.
Kyle wrote…”A school board certainly faces far less pressure to keep its costs, and in turn its prices, low than any business in a competitive industry faces.”
Again an interesting leap of logic not really supported by facts. You really don’t have to go much further than comparing the expenditures per student of a private school to that of a public one to see that the public school is delivering more value per dollar. I think if you really broke it down you would find that costs in a fast growing business…say Google…are far more exorbitant than you would find in any public school.
Kyle wrote…”And no, I never said “a college education has no impact on one’s earning ability.” (For someone who likes to accuse me of fighting straw men, you have a nasty habit of arguing against things I never wrote.)”
Nor, contrary to the accusation, did I say you wrote that…I asked a question…
“are you trying to say that a college education has no impact on one’s earning ability. In spite of mountains of data to the contrary?”
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
1:30 pm
“Does anyone have the cost figures and saving related to health care tort reform efforts for Texas?”
They are not saving as yet in Texas, largely due to doctors ALSO getting PAID to run those tests, but as most thing in life, these things take time to hammer into some people.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
1:33 pm
I’m trying to find the link to a study out of Tennessee that showed the 30% figure, FACTS, but thus far it is eluding me.
Google is NOT my friend this afternoon.
Dusty
April 30th, 2012
1:35 pm
Well, this looks like a good time to place a “plug” for DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS.
They provide emergency heathcare around the world and establish health centers with doctors, nurses and medical supplies in some of the worst places and situations in the world.
One example was Haiti after the terrible earthquake. D W B came immediately even with “portable” operating rooms and many other supplies and help for tragic situations. Their “operating” expenses for the home offices are very small.
Lutheran World Relief is also an agency now pressing for funds to fight malaria. Malaria is a great killer of children in many African countries. With medications and anti-mosquito netting, etc., the death rate is cut drastically. LWR spends very little money on the “home offices”.
You can find info on both of these relief agencies on google. Their good works go around the world. We should never complain about our healthcare when so many people on this earth have little or none.
Kyle Wingfield
April 30th, 2012
1:46 pm
JDW: Oversight, OK. But there was plenty of government action for subprime mortgages: strongly, ahem, encouraging banks to make the loans; giving Fan and Fred, which bought said loans from banks, an implicit bailout guarantee (now explicit), turbocharging the loan proliferation; keeping interest rates so low for so long …
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
1:46 pm
“You really don’t have to go much further than comparing the expenditures per student of a private school to that of a public one to see that the public school is delivering more value per dollar.”
Unless you consider mediocrity a “value” in the public schools and “results” a value in the private schools. Then your whole statement is rendered null and void, isn’t it, JDW?
Kyle Wingfield
April 30th, 2012
1:46 pm
Also, being enablers for the ratings agencies, by 1) limiting their number and 2) requiring the use of their ratings.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
1:48 pm
Proove it, you want health care for all but aren’t doing anything to make that a reality, other than bellyaching and trying to have others be conscripted to paying for your dream.
Don’t be a hypocrite. Give.
Road Scholar
April 30th, 2012
1:50 pm
Dusty: Also Engineers w/o Borders have done some good in 3rd world countries. The Ga Tech chapter has worked on projects to improve the water supply and waste treatment at low costs and it is renewable.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
1:52 pm
Pretty much every conversation we have here comes down to one question.
How much are the moochers and parasites going to be able to steal from people who work for a living?
Proove it with FACTS
April 30th, 2012
1:54 pm
Barry
You must have me mistaken for someone else……… You seem upset because I was in a dialogue with Tiberius and not you.
I’m no national health care advocate. I noticed the information that was posted and asked questions, so I could also reference the information in the future.
Tiberius provided numerous links and I thanked him for taking the time to do so.
No need to be upset with me and call me a hypocrite for something I do not advocate.
I hope you will be ok
Frontman
April 30th, 2012
2:02 pm
“An apt comparison and another case where LACK OF government oversight and action is the primary culprit.”
It seems pretty obvious that the government’s attempt to ensure that everyone gets a college education is the real problem here. This is very similar to the subprime mortgage crisis – encouraging and shoving people into commitments that they may not reasonably shoulder, then wringing your hands when those people do exactly what you thought they might do – default. And you think that the optimal solution is to let the government regulate more and act more? When are you going to learn that government’s tendency is to create many more problems than it solves when it manipulates social or economic conditions?
Just saying..
April 30th, 2012
2:24 pm
Just guessing that the for profit schools gorging on student loans are part of your solution?
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
2:32 pm
Prove it: I’m no national health care advocate. I noticed the information that was posted and asked questions
——–
Mmm hmm.
There’s a form of troll who gets his/her jollies asking questions and trying to keep others busy.
Glad to hear you don’t support nationalized healthcare! Heh heh.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
2:35 pm
Health care used to be just another thing…if you needed some, you went out and got it.
And then government busybodies got involved.
Much the same with education and university.
Thanks, Democrats.
I Report (-: You Whine )-: mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin...
April 30th, 2012
2:41 pm
Gallup, official propaganda poll of the dummycrat party- Romney 47% obozo 46%, just sayin…
hryder
April 30th, 2012
2:45 pm
Vote out all incumbent office holders in the November elections. Especially the entertainer in chief, President Obama. He has fewer positive accomplishments holding public office other than his being elected,enriching his supporters, and vacation traveling for his family, friends, and self at public taxpayer expense than anyone since my birth,1942. He reached his level of total incompetence when elected to the Illinois legislature. Unfortunately, he continued demonstating this incompetence when elected to th U.S. Senate and Presidency. He vividly indicated the inability to carry out the duties of the office when a legislator by voting “Present”. He was there, that is all.
Dusty
April 30th, 2012
3:10 pm
Road Scholar 1:50
Glad to hear about Engineers without Borders. Good to know they are tackling some of those projects in third world countries. GA Tech is right in there helping. Filling a great need, I imagine.
Old timer
April 30th, 2012
3:47 pm
Republicans are only raiding the SAME pot democrats raided for pay roll tax cuts last year…..what is the difference? We cannot just keep on spending. Some college kids might give up their car and live on campus to help cut their borrowing. They could live at home for a year or two…..I lived on rice and beans in college…so didmy girls. I am a teacher and could only help some.
Colleges could cut some administrative posts. I hope professor’s pay and benefits are shrinking like classroom teacher’s.
Dusty
April 30th, 2012
3:52 pm
Well, what do ya know (off subject)? Bill Clinton has come out in full force for Obama. The one thing that ol’ Bill likes more than women is politics.
Now Bill jumps on the Romney dirt wagon. Then they all go to guessing what Romney would do if he were president and had bin Laden in his sights. Then an Admiral who was in on the whole decision process did not say that Obama made the whole kill’em decision. He said in so many words that the answer was obvious to all and of course any president would go after a sure sighting of an enemy.
What next? Would Romney let John Wilks Booth shoot Lincoln if he had been at the theater?
Democrat speech writers are already headed for the lower levels of insinuation and defamation. I thought they had exhausted themselves with Bush but I guess not. They are cranking up all the big wheels who might say the “correct” things.
I wonder if Hillary is kicking Bill in the shins when he pats Obama on the back? She should.
————————————————————————————————-
BULLETIN: Braves against Pittsburgh tonight at 7:10. Go Braves!
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
3:54 pm
Lousy ingrates should be thanking the taxpayer for providing UNSECURED loans at 6.8% instead of whining about the interest rate.
When did beggars get so darn choosy?
MarkV
April 30th, 2012
3:57 pm
hryder @2:45 pm
Have you vented your spleen sufficiently or one day, or are we to expect more stupidities from you today?
MarkV
April 30th, 2012
3:58 pm
for one day
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
4:00 pm
Sounds like a personal attack to me.
Finn McCool (Class Warfare === Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
April 30th, 2012
4:12 pm
Gallup, official propaganda poll of the dummycrat party- Romney 47% obozo 46%, just sayin…
Gallup? LOL, try Las Vegas. Those guys aren’t in business to lose money. You want a key as to who will win? Keep an eye on the latest political line.
MarkV
April 30th, 2012
4:15 pm
One of the most disgraceful things some conservatives do is to deny the President the credit for Bin Laden killing. First, falsely claiming that he did not make the decision alone. Then, that any president would have made the same decision, even claiming the ridiculous falsity that there was “a sure sighting of an enemy.”
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
4:23 pm
Our brave troops killed bin Laden. Obozo will happily take credit for it, since it went so well.
Trillion dollar budget deficits three years in a row? Bush’s fault.
Disgraceful.
carlosgvv
April 30th, 2012
4:33 pm
Barry
And if Bin Laden had been killed during Bush’s administration, he wouldn’t have taken credit for it?
TruthBe
April 30th, 2012
4:41 pm
Salaries and benefits of most these Corrupt Liberal Professors at Colleges and Universities are too high. Get rid of the liberal perverted professors and make the rest earn their salaries with better educated students to become the leaders of tomorrow instead of community activists.
TruthBe
April 30th, 2012
4:51 pm
carlosgv, What has Obama done to improve the Nation? What has Obama done to improve the economy? How come Obama hasn’t kept his campaign promises? How come Obama has become the great divider instead of the great unitier? How come Obama and his administration spend so much? How come Obama put two communists on the supreme courts? How come Obama has so many czars?
Tiberius - Banned by Bookman and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
4:57 pm
Disgraceful, MarkV? You don’t know the meaning of the word. Disgraceful is taking a snippet of one line in a series of lines that were said and only using the snippet that takes the whole line of thought out of context.
Then claiming you’re not excessively celebrating when asked about your ad.
In the real world, we call that lying through your teeth. In your world, you chalk it up to campaigning.
THAT is disgusting and disgraceful, MarkV.
I’ll give that lying SOB the credit for making a decision 99% of Americans would have made in the same situation, but that was no gutsy call he made, and any attempt to glorify it as such is pathetic.
MarkV
April 30th, 2012
5:05 pm
Tiberius @4:57 pm
Disgraceful and disgusting, and a lying SOB – that fits you, Tiberius. Not to mention being an imbecil, with your claim of what 99% of Americans would do in the same situation.
Dusty
April 30th, 2012
5:08 pm
Carlos,
Saddam was killed while Bush was president. Bush made the decision to rid the world of a dictator and also the possiblity of wmds. He did it legally with consent from Congress.
Bush made his decision for the good of our country. the Iraqis finished Saddam after Bush gave them the opportunity. Obama made his decision for the good of our country. The SEALS completed the riddance of bin Laden after Obama gave them approval….
I don’t see that one president deserves more praise than another.
Tiberius - Banned by Bookman and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
5:13 pm
If you don’t think that 99% of Americans wouldn’t have made that decision (and wouldn’t have taken 17 hours to make it) then you’re more out if touch with reality than I thought, MarkV.
Dusty
April 30th, 2012
5:16 pm
Obama did not make the decision alone to “go ahead” on the finalities of bin Laden. There is even a photograph of the group with Obama as they sat worriedly considering all odds.
Obama had the final word because he was president and the only legal one to do it. But it was a group agreement legalized by Obama. I don’t think he denies that. Just takes credit for it while others say it.
Ask Hillary, the admiral and others in the making of that decision. They were all there.
mountain man
April 30th, 2012
5:17 pm
“Add the mandatory fees that figure more and more prominently into their prices, and the price has nearly tripled at both Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia.”
300% in ten years equals about 30% increase per year. You are right – no wonder today’s students have to have so much more in student loans.
MarkV
April 30th, 2012
5:28 pm
“Obama did not make the decision alone to “go ahead” on the finalities of bin Laden. There is even a photograph of the group with Obama as they sat worriedly considering all odds. “
It is amazing, but mainly shameful and disgraceful to make these statements. Not only totally misinterpreting the photograph. But mainly ignoring the undeniable truth: Only the Commander-in- Chief COULD make the decision. That was a commander does – makes the decision. It is unbelievably ignorant to deny this. There is no such thing as “group agreement.” By all accounts, many of the major participants advised against the action.
People who were there were asked. And their answer is quite clear. The President made the decision.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
5:38 pm
carlosgvv: And if Bin Laden had been killed during Bush’s administration, he wouldn’t have taken credit for it?
———
Our President Bush took responsibility for what happened on his watch. He is a gentleman and prou American. Obozo gloms on to anything positive and passes the buck for his failures. He’s a petulant putz
Tiberius - Banned by Bookman and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
5:42 pm
Admiral: “Is it a go Mr. President? ”
Obama: “I’ll get back to you tomorrow. ”
Given all the intelligence we had, and it took him 17 hours to make the easiest decision of his presidency?
Seriously?
Dusty
April 30th, 2012
5:43 pm
Mountain Man 5:17
There are still other ways to pay for higher education than taking a government loan. That should be considered first.
Among them are working a year or two after high school and then go to the university. Or get a loan from your parents or grandparents and pay them the interest. Or study enough to get a scholarship. Or excel in sports or some activity and get a scholarship. I don’t advocate internet universities because most of their degrees gain less favor. They do cut some expenses.
I want our young people at the university level to begin taking care of their own financial needs without government help. They need to stop the trend of depending on government for every personal effort. The government was not established for personal needs but for the direction and protection of our country, not a personal nanny, banker and health bandaid.
Today’s students will have plenty of USA debt without adding student loans to their burden..
Dusty
April 30th, 2012
5:53 pm
Obama made the “legal” decision as has already been said. Documented evidence cannot be denied. The president did not sit in room by himself and decide anything. He never said he did.
I ‘m sorry if personal opinion does not agree with the obvious truth. NO need for a vendetta. We are all Americans and name calling pleases no one but terrorists bent to destroy us. Don’t help them.
MarkV
April 30th, 2012
6:00 pm
And nobody claimed that the President sat by himself when he made the decision. Even if it might be true – reports are that he made the decision after the meetings, in private, and communicated it in the morning. Whether it is true or not, is also immaterial. The burden of decision was exclusively his.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
6:01 pm
Romney said that even Jimmy Carter would have given the OK on the bin Laden mission. I for one would have to hear Carter say it before making that assumption.
MarkV
April 30th, 2012
6:04 pm
You are not just out of touch of reality – you have no idea what reality is, Tiberius. You do not even realize how pathetic you are.
Kyle Wingfield
April 30th, 2012
6:06 pm
Folks, I suggest you save the Romney/Obama/Pakistan talk for tomorrow, when I plan to write about it myself.
MarkV
April 30th, 2012
6:08 pm
“We are all Americans and name calling pleases no one but terrorists bent to destroy us.”
Think about it when you and others indulge in character assassination of the democratically elected head of the country.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
6:19 pm
How ironic that MarkV invokes our Americanism in advising us about addressing our America-hating “head”.
MarkV
April 30th, 2012
6:28 pm
@6:19: Supplying evidence for what I have written @6:08.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
6:58 pm
All you have evidence of is that some of us remember what it’s like to have as President a patriot who is President of all Americans rather than a pretender who, as just one example, singles out some Americans for criticism merely because they donated to his opponent.
Tiberius - Banned by Bookman and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
6:58 pm
Character assassination is only in play when the person in question has some, but when the president lies about his opponent it proves the president has none.
Dusty
April 30th, 2012
7:03 pm
Well, so much for that. Kyle will give us a good opinion tomorrow.
The Braves are playing in about ten minutes. Get READY! I feel like a winner tonight. I think the Braves feel the same way. Go Braves!!!
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
7:03 pm
The Obama campaign says Americans who donate to Mitt Romney are “betting against America”.
Is that what you were talking about, MarkV?
Hypocrite.
Dusty
April 30th, 2012
7:11 pm
I guess I have to close with one more thing. I don’t want any Democrat telling me about character assassination after eight years of every form of insult being thrown at President Bush.
Amd what do ya know, he was the democratically elected head of the United States.
TruthBe
April 30th, 2012
7:33 pm
Here it is plain and simple, Obama is not a leader. Obama is a total disgrace as our president. Hillary was correct when she said he had NO experience to be commander-in chief. Vote Obama OUT of office in November and save the Nation from anymore harm from him and the communists he installed in his administration.
MarkV
April 30th, 2012
8:29 pm
“I don’t want any Democrat telling me about character assassination after eight years of every form of insult being thrown at President Bush.”
You may not want it, but you will get it. Because there is no “collective responsibility” in such a matter. There is an individual responsibility. I am not responsible what some people said about President Bush, but you are responsible for your insults of President Obama.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 30th, 2012
8:32 pm
Sorry, MarkV, but you don’t determine what anyone else is responsible for.
Your Messiah, on the other hand, has said that if the economy was still failing three years in, that it would be his fault.
Obozo: responsible for the deficit, unemployment, and mass poverty.
Dusty
April 30th, 2012
8:36 pm
What insults? Your imagination?
@@
April 30th, 2012
8:40 pm
If the government’s behind it, it can’t be good.
There’s no such thing as easy money.
Tiberius - Banned by Bookman and proud of it!
April 30th, 2012
8:42 pm
Its not an insult if its true, MarkV.
This president is a stinking liar. Proven.
j$
April 30th, 2012
10:04 pm
They should have a national lottery to help pay off the debt.
In 500 years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESnxWz8Cqp0
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
May 1st, 2012
1:12 am
In anticipation of Kyle’s column later today regarding Romney and Bin Laden, here’s proof-positive that the current Disaster-in-Chief lied to the American people in his recent campaign ad by taking a snippet of a larger response from Mitt Romney and using it to create the false impression that Romney wouldn’t have made the same decision Obama made.
Here’s the full quote:
LIZ SIDOTI: “Why haven’t we caught bin Laden in your opinion?”
GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY: “I think, I wouldn’t want to over-concentrate on Bin Laden. He’s one of many, many people who are involved in this global Jihadist effort. He’s by no means the only leader. It’s a very diverse group – Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood and of course different names throughout the world.”
(The snippet used by the lying President Obama) “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”
(The rest of Romney’s remarks) “It is worth fashioning and executing an effective strategy to defeat global, violent Jihad and I have a plan for doing that.”
Source: http://ace.mu.nu/archives/328802.php
And what a surprise that AP was distorting the true meaning of Romney’s remarks. Following that interview, Romney was asked to clarify his position during a debate:
Romney: “Thank you. Of course we get Osama bin Laden and track him wherever he has to go, and make sure he pays for the outrage he exacted upon America.”
Moderator: “Can we move heaven and earth to do it?”
Romney: “We’ll move everything to get him. But I don’t want to buy into the Democratic pitch that this is all about one person — Osama bin Laden — because after we get him, there’s going to be another and another. This is about Shia and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and Al Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is a worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate. They ultimately want to bring down the United States of America. This is a global effort we’re going to have to lead to overcome this jihadist effort. It’s more than Osama bin Laden. But he is going to pay, and he will die.”
No question as to what Mitt Romney would have done, now is there?
This President has NO HONOR whatsoever. A better man would never have “spiked the ball” (especially after saying he wouldn’t), nor would he do it using a lie to score cheap political points.
The current Disaster-in-Chief has been replaced by the Liar-in-Chief. The small, petty Chicago hood has come out to campaign.